News & Events
News & Events
Academic Year 2009-2010
Dr. Jayna Ditty recieved an NSF grant to study bacterial chemotaxis. She is collaborating with Dr. Rebecca Parales, UCDavis. A summary of the project appears below.
Bacterial Chemotaxis to Aromatic Hydrocarbons and Related Pollutants.
Chemotaxis is the ability of motile bacteria to detect and respond to specific chemicals in the environment, moving up gradients of attractant compounds and away from repellents. Although diverse bacteria appear to have conserved chemotaxis signal transduction systems, soil bacteria seem to have more complex chemosensory systems than the well-studied enteric bacteria. The overall goal of this project is to characterize the chemotactic responses of a biodegradative bacterium to aromatic hydrocarbons and related pollutants, using the catabolically versatile aromatic hydrocarbon-degrading bacterium Pseudomonas putida F1 as the model organism for these studies.
Dr. Jennifer Cruise and Dr. Simon Emms will be on sabatical for this entire academic year. Dr. Kyle Zimmer will take his sabatical for fall semester only.
Academic Year 2008-2009
Two new clinical faculty members were hired to begin Fall 2009. Dr. Colin Martin will be teaching BIOL 204 beginning in September and Dr. Kerri Carlson will be lecturing in BIOL 201.
Dr. Tim Lewis will be joining the department as our new chair in September 2009. Dr. Lewis comes to us frm Whittenburg College in Ohio.
Dr. Adam Kay recieved an NSF grant to study ant communities in Panama. There are more details about the project below.
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Toward a stoichiometric theory of ant ecology This 3-year project funded by the National Science Foundation aims to assess how the balance of available nutrients affects the population and community ecology of ants. The field work will be conducted at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. The research, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Michael Kaspari at Oklahoma University, focuses on the diverse community of litter ants found in the pristine tropical rainforest on the island. The project is organized around two broad hypotheses: 1) organisms have different traits that require particular mixtures of materials, and 2) scarcity of particular materials will have distinct effects on the expression of traits. The work will consist of a mixture of biochemical analyses of ant tissues, diet manipulation studies under controlled conditions, and large-scale experiments in the forest that will test whether inputs of particular nutrients predictably change the structure and composition of litter ant communities. Combined, these studies represent the most thorough and mechanistic linking of biogeochemistry to evolutionary ecology yet attempted for a terrestrial animal system. Undergraduate students will play key roles in all phases of the planned work. The familiarity and experimental tractability of ants make them an ideal instructional tool, and the multiple research foci of the project will provide opportunities for students to acquire a diversity of skills. Together, these experiences should provide students with the skills, knowledge, and motivation to pursue a career in science. |
Dr. Jayna Ditty and Dr. Kyle Zimmer were granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor.
Dr. Dalma Martinovic joined the department in January of 2009. She came to us from the EPA where she did research in environmental toxicology. She is teaching a 400-level topics course in Advanced Environmental Physiology in Spring of 2009.
Dr. Kurt Illig, a neurobiologist, will be joining the department in the Fall of 2009.
The first issue of our new departmental newsletter,Transcripts, was published in November. Click here to read.
Summer 2008
This summer, 40 research students are working in 9 different labs and being mentored by both faculty and staff.
The new parking ramp is being constructed on the site of the former tennis courts, just south of the greenhouse.
